


pacific standard time

by jadeddiva



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 11:23:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6077517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeddiva/pseuds/jadeddiva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not until Thompson says something and, unbeknownst to him, Peggy apes him behind his back, that Sousa feels a pinch in his chest, a smile crossing his lips before he can even catch himself.  Daniel Sousa, time, and just what three hours can mean.  Set in the early eps of Season 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pacific standard time

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks goes to @ohmyohpioneer for taking a glance at this, my first Marvel fic, and @captain--kitten who let me yell some of the plot points at her.

When he was a kid, he measured time in how fast it took him to race to the street sign on the corner, or how quickly he could sneak a sausage out of the kitchen, or how many steps it took for him to run to a fight instead of away from it. Time was something that was real, and he felt it in those moments between waking and sleep – an eye opening, blinking as he glanced at the bedside clock – or the deep breath before plunging headfirst into the ocean. 

Daniel played with time like a cat with a mouse. Five more minutes until school. Half an hour until church. He would close his eyes, take a few breaths, and wake up right when he was supposed to.

But over and over again he forgot the simple rules: that time had a way of refusing to play nice. Minutes and seconds and hours shifted from being infinite to becoming slippery, running out of his hands like the egg whites his mother separates when baking a cake (his father’s banging on the door to wake him up, his sisters pinching his sides as he snores during mass, losing the race to the corner, coming home with more than one black eye - )

There is a moment, between the flash and the bang, that he thinks he will live if he just shifts his body away from the sound and the fury. 

He can do this. 

The moment stretches before him like eternity.

(But time is never on his side). 

 

…

 

A lot of the men in the SSR served in the war, which means the words “before” and “after” are constants in their vocabulary: before the war, just before I shipped out, after the war, after I came home. That’s because their life is split into two parts (not halves, they’re not really quite whole anymore) and those words keep the memories separate while allowing something else to fill the space between.

None of the men came home without more baggage than they brought with them and Daniel, well, he brought home more than most, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t matter because it does.

He doesn’t miss his leg – how can you miss something that you never really thought about until it was gone? – but he misses the feeling of completeness that was lost with the leg. He misses the wholeness of being able to bear weight on both sides, and the ease of getting into bed at night without the complications of a prosthetic (everything in his life seems more complicated these days).

He’s practiced walking so much that he’s got it down easy, but that doesn’t stop the averted eyes or the flagrant stares as he stumbles down the street with his aluminum crutch. He doesn’t like the way he has to shift to the side as he climbs the steps to his third-floor walkup, overly aware of his leg and his crutch, feeling the space they take up in the stairwell of his tiny building (his mother always taught him to be polite, and this feels like quite the opposite even if it’s the only way he can get anywhere these days).

He can’t kneel at mass, which still causes the old biddies of the Altar Society to give him a few stern looks even after they see him with his crutch, but it’s the averted gaze of the younger members of the congregation which makes his stomach clench, and the way that the ushers make sure to hold the door open for him that makes him feel like he is five and stumbling up the stairs, overeager to be the one to put money in the collection plate.

There is the subway, the stairs and the store and the office girls who look at him with sympathy that he doesn’t want and his colleagues who came back whole but with their own scars, hidden deep beneath the skin, none of which knew him before but who try to make light of the after. 

With the SSR, there are still moments where he is nothing more than a cripple, but those are few and far between, and the spaces where he is more than that – where he is a true member of the team – fill the rest of the void in his fractured existence.

There is also an elevator, so that helps, too.

But then again, the SSR has Peggy Carter (and she is the opposite of helpful).

…

He hears all about Peggy Carter before she even steps foot into the New York SSR office.

War hero, some say, while others comment on her closeness to Captain America (Krzeminski), her ties to Howard Stark (Dooley), or the fact that she’s a woman (Thompson) or British (damn near half the boys they bring in, wet behind the ears and fresh from the Ivies). So, from everything that Daniel can piece together, she’s a formidable asset and they are lucky to have her on their side (especially if she makes the men in this office as nervous as she does).

Daniel’s grown up with strong women in his life – his mother, his two older sisters, all the girl cousins and second-cousins that lived down the block or three streets over – and so he watches the other men work themselves up over the thought of a female agent with amusement. It doesn’t phase him in the least, because all the women he grew up with would put the men in this room to shame.

(He is angered by the Captain American comments. The insinuation is everywhere, by the coffee pot and in the elevator, spoken out loud in their cars as they drive to and from a case. Peggy Carter goes by a different name in the radio play that he sometimes listens to because he’s got several good reasons to respect the hell out of the man, God rest his soul, but it’s still there. Captain America’s girl. No one can say her name without adding his, and it bothers Daniel because he’s pretty sure that someone with Agent Carter’s reputation wouldn’t have come by it by just sleeping around and the fact that most of the men in the office seem to think that she has pisses him off.)

She arrives while he’s out tracking down a lead that ends up nowhere, so when he returns to find a new face fetching coffee with a poorly-camouflaged look of frustration, he’s surprised.

“Isn’t that Agent Carter?” he asks one of the junior agents, who just shrugs and clearly thinks nothing of a girl answering their phones.

He stops by to introduce himself later, taking in the dark eyes and dark hair (nice body, but he’s trying not to look because his mama raised him better than that), and he think she’s pretty enough. But it’s her smile that stop him in his tracks, because she’s something else, their new agent, and it shows in the twist of her lips upwards in response to a compliment (and the twist downwards when someone calls her sweetheart, the clear way that she’s biting her tongue until it bleeds which makes his fists clench and his jaw tense).

It’s not until Thompson says something and, unbeknownst to him, Peggy apes him behind his back, that Sousa feels a pinch in his chest, a smile crossing his lips before he can even catch himself. 

Well shit.

…

“Thompson can be a good guy.”

“I highly doubt that. A capable agent, perhaps, but being good at one’s job doesn’t automatically make someone a good man.”

“To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure that he’s good at his job.”

“I shan’t to argue with you there, Agent Sousa.”

…

He falls fast and hard (time is never on his side) and it’s completely expected because Peggy Carter is stubborn as a mule and just a bit reckless and headstrong and principled and that makes her the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen.

It’s obvious to everyone, it seems, except for her, and so he knows he must be making cow-eyes or something but he can’t stop. She’s fearless and strong and her smile makes his stomach do flips and she has this way of looking at him out of the corner of her eye that makes his heart ache and he has to stop himself from staring at her across the room, has to make himself look away because, well, she’s not going to look at him any time soon.

He knows this because none of the girls do anymore. He was never the most popular with the ladies but he did well enough and now it seems that they would rather have a man who looks whole on the outside and is broken on the inside than him. And now, dates never progress beyond the first, and the phone calls aren’t always returned, and so he spends more nights than not returning home after work, climbing the three flights of stairs to spend quality time with his radio and his whisky and his thoughts.

But Peggy Carter, she is something else entirely, and while she doesn’t show him the pity that other girls do, it’s clear to him now that she was Captain America’s girl, and Krzeminski’s right – no one is going to trade a shield for a crutch.

…

“You worry too much, Agent Sousa.”

“That’s what my mom says, too.”

…

He wakes up to the sound of the garbage men down the street. 

He doesn’t sleep easily – war, and the odd hours of the SSR, and the lingering feelings of loneliness that seem to follow him home and up the stairs keep him up at night and make the hours stretch on forever and ever – yet he always wakes when the garbage men come, and he can never fall back asleep after that. 

But this time his hand slips across the blanket to the cold sheets of the bed beside him, and he feels that loneliness more acutely when he considers the dream he woke from (the feel of Peggy’s lips against his own, his hand against her hip, the smell of her perfume still lingering in his nostrils even now that he is wide awake). 

He feels shame rise up the back of his neck because Peggy Carter deserves more than some cripple fantasizing about her, but he can’t stop his fingers from clenching in the sheets, can’t shake the coldness that seeps into his bones even as he stumbles out of bed and towards the window, hoping for the weak rays of the sun and settling for the streetlight as the tries to feel warm again (there are far too many hours before the dawn for his liking).

…

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself – “

“- except when you’re not.”

“And those occasions are few and far between, Agent Sousa. It would appear that Chief is looking for you.”

“So he is.”

…

There are moments when she looks at him like she knows, like she’s not ignorant of how he feels about her (these moments are usually followed by a reminder that she doesn’t need his help, and that she can do this and that she knows her worth and he knows it too but it stings, just a little, to think that she doesn’t want him his help). Those moments are more terrifying than the worst firefight he was in during the war, because he’s never loved anyone like he loves her.

There are moments when she looks at him with a softness that takes him by surprise, because it comes at the strangest times and he’s never sure that he’s quite earned her respect, or her praise, or even that bit of softness that signals affection but he gets it anyway. The problem is that it makes him think maybe and -

He takes a leap of faith.

She says no.

He falls.

…

“Raincheck?”

“Of course.”

…

He doesn’t fully appreciate the expanse of time until he arrives in Los Angeles: the sun is in the exact position in the sky that it was when he left New York, or so it feels like to him, and it makes him think that nothing has changed, that he stepped on an airplane and then off again, that he’s still in the same space as her, that she will be waiting around the corner for him to remind him of just what he’s trying to give up.

But he’s not. There are hours and miles of desert and mountains and prairies between him and her New York and in the clear blue sky of LA he feels like he can breathe for the first time.

He does. It feels good.

He feels warm, and doesn’t remember when he started to feel so cold.

The SSR gives him a car, and a house with only three stairs and even if the office doesn’t have an elevator, everything feels manageable in a way that it didn’t in New York. Rose smiles at him from her desk inside the talent agency, and the men call him Chief and it’s nice. It’s nicer than he thought it would be (he keeps looking in the direction where her desk should be until he catches himself and reminds himself nope, not here Sousa, she’s gone).

After his first day on the job, he drives to the ocean. 

He stares at it for what feels like hours or minutes or somewhere in between (he can’t tell time anymore, he’s lost track of time because his body is stuck somewhere between New York and LA but his mind is here yet his heart - ) before deciding to walk towards it. 

It’s difficult going, making sure that his crutch and leg work together in the softly sliding sand, but he manages to make it to the water’s edge. He toes off his shoe, reaches down and pulls off his sock.

The Pacific is colder than he expected as it laps at his toes, but it’s not as cold as the empty bed that wait for him at home.

…

Violet helps with his physical therapy.

She has warm hands and a warm heart, and she is everything that he has come to find here: bright eyes and bright hair, a cheery disposition and easy smiles (it’s strange, to not have to work for a smile, to not have to try so hard to impress someone, and he’s not sure what to think). They go on one date, then another, then another before he kisses her, and her lips are warm and her mouth is soft, and she is everything that he thinks he needs.

(And still he thinks of her, in New York City, of the curve of her hip and the fire in her belly and the way that he felt whenever she looked at him, like he was more than everyone else thought he could be, and he kisses Violet harder, nips at her lip and she cries out in alarm and he hates himself because in his dreams she likes that, the aggressive way he wants to kiss her, taste her, and but he is here with Violet and – )

“Sorry,” he whispers against Violet’s lips. “I got carried away.”

…

“Why didn’t you return my calls?”

…

He should have known better.

Peggy smiles at him from across the room but there’s a hesitancy to her smile, a wariness that she seems to have picked up in Los Angeles (it wasn’t there before, in New York, in the beginning). He does his level best to look reassuring as he smiles back, tries to ignore the Feds swooping around them with their talk of being branded Communist sympathizers - tries to ignore the swooping feeling in his stomach that always seems to happen when he’s around Peggy Carter.

Three-hour time difference. Three months apart. Barely a week back together and all those feelings he came to LA to avoid are rushing back into the space they once occupied, crammed between his gut and his chin, making it hard to breathe around her.

Daniel keeps smiling until she looks away. 

Damn Thompson. Damn the man.


End file.
